Written by Chad Wesley Smith
Strategically choosing your weights for training is a critical aspect of long term training success. Go too light and you won’t overload yourself enough, go too heavy and you’ll run into fatigue management issues, along with potentially missing weights.
View this post on Instagram
Build Gradually
The Principle of Overload dictates that training must become harder over time, so if you start a training cycle too heavy, there won’t be enough room for you to increase weight over the weeks to satisfy this principle. Simply put, this will be training hard, harder, hardest and then deload.
✅ Transition From Block To Block
As you transition from one block to another, you should consider what you are basing your weights on, %s or RPE, this can be important in how you adjust your weights for the following block. If you are basing your weights on %s, there are 2 important things to remember:
1-What is it a % of?
2-%s are just a suggestion and should not be treated as a hard and fast rule. If you are selecting your weights based on RPE, you should just use your previous block to inform your decisions and then adjust by feel on the day.
✅ Track Your Maxes
When selecting weights for your or your athletes training, it is important to know and track your maxes in the exercises you are using. Failure to track max singles, rep maxes and volume PRs will make it difficult to choose weights that allow you to drive Hypertrophic and Strength gains and will ultimately violate the Principle of Overload.
